Name fifteen good 80s bands
Posted on
Some months ago, a colleague of mine set me a challenge. He asked me to name fifteen good bands from the 1980s. Now, anybody who was born prior to 1980, and perhaps later, would probably have no difficulty naming fifteen bands, so there was a caveat. They had to be good bands. And by that, he meant that they had to be bands that I would still happily listen to now. That somewhat narrowed the field. Months later, I've struggled to get to half a dozen.
I wasn't born before 1980. I was born in 1981. I lived through the 80s. I confess that, as a child who didn't know any better, I sang along to the music, I wore the shell suits and I had my hair cut into the flattest flattop possible (sometimes with a step). I used words like 'ace', I watched the A-Team and I found other things to do while waiting for my Commodore 64 to load the game I intended to play later. And, despite spending eight and a half years in that decade, I still genuinely struggle to come up with even half the requested number of good 80s bands.
Now, okay, this is largely a matter of taste. Poor taste probably, but taste none the less. Let's just say personal taste to be on the safe side. As I said, people born before the 80s began may have a closer affiliation with the decade. For example, my passion for music really developed in the 90s when I became a teenager. Perhaps people who experienced their formative years in the 80s, would have a better appreciation of the music in that era. Perhaps a child of the 70s would be able to appreciate such music because they grew up with it. But then, how much of that would just be nostalgia and how much is down to the quality of the bands?
Then again, maybe the good stuff was hidden from me. Having heard the sort of things my mother listens to, it's entirely possible that she shielded me from good music for the entire duration of my childhood, perhaps as a kind of social experiment to see how I'd turn out. Indeed, I had to discover the likes of Metallica (originally an 80s band) and Guns N' Roses (likewise) for myself.
The conclusion I've come to is that the challenge my friend set me is not possible. There aren't fifteen good 80s bands. There never were. For ten years, taste and decency went out the window or was masqueraded at gunpoint in polyester, perms and (shoulder) pads. Thankfully I'm not alone. Of the six people in the room I work in, none of them—including the person who suggested the question—could come up with fifteen good 80s bands.
Now, I don't dispute that there were some good 80s bands. And obviously my own personal preference is playing a role here. Some of my favourite bands formed or had their first hits in the 80s. Some are even still going. So it's not that I can't get the ball rolling. I can. I just can't roll it very far.